Language Policy and Language Practice in Official Administrations Th in 19 Century Flanders

LANGUAGE POLICY AND LANGUAGE PRACTICE IN OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATIONS TH IN 19 CENTURY FLANDERS WIM VANDENBUSSCHE, ELINE VANHECKE, ROLAND WILLEMYNS AND JETJE DE GROOF Fund for Scientific Research–Flanders & Vrije Universiteit Brussel Belgium [email protected] 1. Introduction This article deals with language choice in the transcriptions of town council meetings from more than 20 different Flemish towns during the 19th century. It is based on the results of a recent large-scale data collection by students of ours in Flemish archives, carried out in the context of the ongoing research programme of the Centre for Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on the sociolinguistic situation in 19th century Flanders.1 Just like in our presentation at the 2003 symposium (cf. Vandenbussche 2003), these innovative results force us to reconsider a number of generally accepted views in yet another domain of the historiography of language policy and language use in Flanders.2 2. Historical background3 The Dutch language territory is made up of the Netherlands and Flanders, the so- called Northern and Southern Low Countries.4 Both areas had a very different political history from 1585 onwards. In that year the Netherlands became (and remained ± ever after) an independent state. Flanders was ruled by Spanish (1585- 1 Wim Vandenbussche led the seminar during which the data was collected. The data was analysed by Eline Vanhecke for her Ph.D. project on chancery language in 19th century Flanders. The theoretical background on language planning and policy at the time is based on the substantial discussion of these issues in Jetje de Groof’s (2004) Ph.D. thesis. Roland Willemyns is in charge of the overall supervision of the project. 2 For a recent extensive overview of our research results since 1995, cf. Vandenbussche, De Groof, Vanhecke & Willemyns 2004. 3 For an introduction to the history of the Dutch language, cf. De Vries, Willemyns & Burger 2004 (in Dutch) or Willemyns 2003b (in English, mainly focused on standardisation issues). 4 The Dutch-speaking island Surinam is not relevant in the context of this article. Wim Vandenbussche, Eline Vanhecke, Roland Willemyns and Jetje de Groof 1714), Austrian (1714-1794) and French (1794-1815) occupiers and, eventually, reunited with the Northern Low Countries from 1815 to 1830. In 1830 Flanders became a part of the new and independent state of Belgium. The distinct political evolution in the North and the South of the Dutch language territory had far-reaching consequences for the status and the elaboration of Dutch in both areas. In the Netherlands the standardisation of Dutch gradually took shape from the ‘Golden’ 17th century onwards; by 1800 it had both the standing and the structural elaboration required to function as a prestige language in all domains of everyday life. In Flanders, however, the foreign rulers after 1585 preferred French as their language of government and prestige. Although no explicit status planning measures were imposed by the Spanish and Austrian occupiers (i.e. until 1794), their de facto choice for French had the consequence that a supra-regional prestige variety of Dutch never developed in the South until the 19th century. Up until that date, the Dutch language in Flanders (spoken by the large majority of the population) remained a collection of regional varieties and local dialects to a large extent. The numerically small but powerful upper social classes and gentry, meanwhile, were (or became ever more) Frenchified (Willemyns 2003). The French annexation of Flanders (1794-1814) marked the beginning of a period of explicit language planning, aimed at a radical and complete Frenchification of the Southern Low Countries. From 1804 onwards it was determined by law that all public and private official documents were to be made up in French only. Although this official policy most certainly caused and reinforced further prestige loss for the Dutch language, the attempt at total Frenchification did not succeed. Apart from the social elite, the majority of the Flemish population simply did not master the French language. As such, many small town chanceries and administrations continued to function in Dutch to a certain extent (Deneckere 1975) whereas in other cases the language laws were never put into practice at all (de Groof 2004). It is to be noted, moreover, that many primary schools continued to teach in Dutch because both pupils and teachers had no French. After the conquest by the Dutch King Willem I in 1814, the Southern Low Countries were reunited with the Northern Dutch provinces and incorporated in the ‘United Kingdom of the Netherlands’. Much like the previous French rulers, the Dutch occupiers tried to put the nationalist ‘one state, one language’ principle into practice in the South. This time, however, Dutch was to become the lingua franca in the entire United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1819, a law was announced that made Dutch the only official administrative language of the state. After a four- year transition period the law took effect from 1823 onwards. In 1830, however, Willem I had to succumb to the growing Southern opposition against his rule and he turned back a number of his linguistic decisions, admitting once again more 4 Language policy and language practice in official administrations in 19th century Flanders rights for the French language in the South. This change came too late to save his political power, however; the Belgian revolution from 1830 sealed his fate. In the new state of Belgium, French was de facto the prestige language of administration, court, school and army from the very onset. Although the only specification given about language matters in the new constitution (article 23) stated that “the use of languages is free”, this liberal principle was used and abused to secure the dominant position of French. A decree from November 1830 made French the only official language of Belgium and, consequently, both Dutch and German were degraded to second-rate languages. The rehabilitation of Dutch only came as late as 1898 with the passing of the ‘Equality Law’, a decree that made both Dutch and French the official languages of Belgium. It took 70 years of social, political, cultural and economical struggle to attain this goal; these actions (and those that followed until well into the 20th century) are commonly referred to as the ‘Flemish Movement’.5 It is impossible to do justice to the full scope of this Flemish Movement in this article but it is fair to say that its basic aim was ‘lifting up’ the Flemish population and its language from its second-rank position. Education played a major, perhaps the most crucial role in this challenge: the majority of the Flemish people was uneducated and poor, the level of education in (Dutch) pauper schools was abominable and all higher and professional education was exclusively organised in French (Ruys 1981: 46). 3. Analysis of the data This article discusses the way in which the successive (and often conflicting) language policies mentioned above were put into practice in the town and village chanceries of 19th century Flanders. Preliminary studies carried out (or supervised) by members of our research group in the town archives of Willebroek (Vanhecke 1998) and Grembergen (Van Meersche 2003) indicated that there may have been a discrepancy between the harshness of the official language regulations and the lenient application thereof in practice. Both case studies revealed, for example, that a lot of official documents continued to be written in Dutch during the French period, despite the radical Frenchification policy (cf. also de Groof 2004). The subsequent Dutchification under Willem I, on the other hand, was already achieved in both villages before the official 1823 deadline (Willemyns & de Groof 2004). The language freedom after 1830 caused a radical switch to French in both Grembergen and Willebroek, be it that Dutch gradually continued to reappear after 5 The state-of-the-art reference work on the Flemish Movement is the Nieuwe Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging (NEVB 1998), containing detailed articles on virtually every aspect of this movement. 5 Wim Vandenbussche, Eline Vanhecke, Roland Willemyns and Jetje de Groof 1838 and, eventually, took over entirely from French during the 1860s, more than 30 years before the Equality Law. Further research revealed a sharp contrast between language preference in larger or smaller towns: the administration of the bigger provincial capitals of Antwerp and Bruges clearly interpreted the constitutional language freedom in favour of French, smaller villages like Grembergen and Willebroek opted for Dutch.6 In order to confirm and refine the general validity of our preliminary case studies, we organised a further series of spot checks in more than 20 different chancery archives across Flanders. The towns and villages included in this data collection are: Aalst, Lebbeke, Liedekerke, Oudenaarde and Zele (in the province of East-Flanders); Brussel (comprising Diegem, Etterbeek, Evere, Haacht, Jette, Ganshoren, Ruisbroek, Vorst), Grimbergen, Halle, Machelen, Meise, Overijse, Tervuren, Tildonk and Wezembeek-Oppem (in the province of Brabant); Bornem, Diest, Geel, Keerbergen, Mechelen, Mol and Turnhout (in the province of Antwerp); Borgloon, Hasselt and Tongeren (in the province of Limburg).7 In every town we checked for each year between 1794 and 1900 which language was used in the written reports of the town council (or, if unavailable, in the reports of the college of aldermen or the registrar’s office). This information was brought together in an Excel spreadsheet and in a series of coloured maps. Unfortunately, due to space and printing restrictions, we are not able to include these maps in the present article. The reader will find this information, however, in Willemyns, Vanhecke & Vandenbussche 2005. A selection of the spreadsheet as well as a map of the towns included in the survey are included as an annex to this article and give the reader a clear overview of the balance between Dutch and French in Flemish administrations at nine crucial moments during the ‘long 19th century’.

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